


Burning Day

by tjs_whatnot



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Gen, run the con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 00:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5890894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjs_whatnot/pseuds/tjs_whatnot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like a snake sheds skin, Mozzie shed lives, easy and painless. </p><p>Usually...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Day

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt "Narrow Escapes."
> 
> Written for LJ's _Run the Con_ at 2 am and completely unbeta'd. Sorry.
> 
> Also I mix metaphors like Kevin mixes his cocktails: sloppy and in abundance. Again, my apologies.

In his many and varied lives, he’d had a lot of narrow escapes, many times when his number was up and his life--the life he had been slinked into like a new skin--flashed before his eyes in technicolor vibrance. Each time he burned a name, began again, created from smoke and ash like a mythical phoenix a new life for himself, he had smiled at the things he’d accomplished in his old life and hardly ever missed it or the souls that peopled it once they were gone.

Hardly ever.

He looked out the window as the plane circled Manhattan, as they swung by the Statue of Liberty, the only place he’d ever loved, the only lady he’d ever worshipped. In this new life, he sat in luxury, his second complementary Stoli swirling with the movement of the plane, the ice tinkling against the crystal. In this new life, he would only fly First Class, he would never again be subjected to the disease of Economy, the death sentence of Business. No, those days were over.

He closed his eyes, waiting for the flash of one life extinguishing and another beginning. He saw them, all of them. When did he let so many of them in? When had he allowed so many people access to mind and his… _oh God, what was this pain in his chest?_

Taking a large swallow of his drink, letting the burn of it take away the sting in his chest, he tried to stop the reel of his past life’s playback, tried to erase the virus in his hard drive. He tried to distort the images, instead of the laugh of Mrs. Suit, he tried to remember her scowl, her disapproval. Instead of Diana’s admiration and her son’s devotion, he tried to remember that precise turn of her lip, that one line in her forehead when she was irritated and fiesty. He tried to forget how much he liked getting her there. He couldn’t even think of June. There were no alterations to her perfection that would do to burn her from his mind.

The Suit, on the other hand, he was easy to manipulate into a monster. He just desperately held on to all the things he’d believed about him--that he was The System, The Man, the Root of All and that nothing he said or did was true or noble. Only, even that didn’t work this time. Somehow, some time when he wasn’t paying attention, The Suit had become _Peter_ and all the things he thought he knew were proven false. How was he going to forget that? Forget him?

And if he couldn’t forget them, how was he supposed to rise from the ashes of the life he left behind? He just couldn’t. They refused to burn.

 _When had this happened?_ he asked himself repeatedly as the plane now circled Paris. _How had I become this? How do I become someone else now?_

And as he stepped off the plane, down the ramp, through customs--which surprisingly didn’t even phase him, that’s how preoccupied he’d become--and out to luggage claim and saw the smile he thought he’d never see again waiting for him, he had all his answers. 

When had this happened? The day that he let Neal Caffrey into his life. And the answer to how he became someone else now? He didn’t. He liked who he was now, who he had been then and was excited to see where he’d wind up in the end.


End file.
